BUT WHAT'S YOUR RANGE

[Carroters]

Sure if you play rock, paper and scissors exactly a third of the time you're not going to lose. However, if you're playing rock paper scissors vs a large group of people who collectively on average don't play paper very much then your strategy is going to be really suboptimal. Obviously you should play rock much more often than anything else and play scissors much less often. Nevertheless a trap a beginner might fall into is to play paper some % of the time as this is optimal vs someone playing GTO RPS. This is a gross simplification of my original pst in this thread. Newer players learning GTO might make this mistake lots in poker, criticising this mistake is not to criticise GTO per se.

Similarly, if someone is really bad at noticing when their opponent plays rocks too much because they've spent all their time learning optimal %s of rock paper and scissors vs someone playing a certain strategies then they might fail to exploit this. Say there's an opponent who always shakes a little before playing scissors, if you can't see this because you're a RPS noob who's jumped right in to working out these optimum %s then you're going to be playing badly vs this guy.

Not all of this is analogous to poker, just using it to show where I stand as the original flavour of the post seems to have been distorted a little.

[Carroters]

You're a microstakes player. You're serious about the game but right now not very good. You want to learn, win, and move up, of course. What is better? Learning ABC, and delaying GTO, maybe forever? Or starting with GTO? And foregoing the common wisdom that is ABC?

We shouldn't see ABC as the alternative to GTO. There are lots of non ABC optimal decisions we can make for good logical reasons that have nothing to do with GTO or what's best for our range over an infinity of some spot occurring.

But yeah I agree that understanding GTO before you have any kind of competent basic poker thought process is going to lead to confusion and bad decisions for the most part.

[NightGizmo]

It has to do with going about learning how to play poker in the correct way.

I think the issue is that you can't tell a new player to learn poker by pointing them at the most advanced topics in the game. That would be like telling someone to start learning physics and handing them a graduate-level quantum theory book. You're setting them up for failure.

If a player can't beat 5NL, they should focus on the basics -- developing reads, hand reading, exploitative play, etc. Just by focusing on those things, they will end up internalizing things like "what equity does my hand have against his range" or "how does my bet affect his range", which are critical skills needed before incorporating any game theory concepts. Obviously there is no problem trying to learn about GTO from the beginning, but there just isn't any good way for a losing/break-even 5NL player to apply it -- they obviously aren't good enough yet.

[Pelion]

I'm thinking like 1/3 of Savy's posts in this thread are drunkposts (e.g. the "When we are playing GTO we make 0 mistakes, that's what matters". stuff), and in the rest he is arguing to play exploitative poker.

[Savy]

I'm now fairly convinced that we're all in agreement in this thread, but we're using terminology differently.
We've gotten all worked up, but we never bothered to determine if we all understand GTO in the same way.
The fact that Savy says, "GTO teaches us exploitative poker. Do you not understand this?" is clear evidence to me.

GTO means we are attempting to finds ways to play almost perfectly. Poker isn't solved so obviously we don't have GTO but by attempting to learn it and seeing how we create really solid almost nash strategies (of which that donkr article I've linked to a few times does @sevenduece) we come across many ways of which don't work that may seem like they work. So we end up coming up with loads of really tight lines, knowing how people might try to exploit us whilst taking these lines and as we've seen why they don't work we have our adjustments already to exploit them, because we know how and why our opponents lines don't work.

When we are looking for all of these ways though our aim isn't to try and play GTO 100% of the time, in reality we'd be doing something wrong to be sat at a table where this would even be remotely needed.

I'm also not saying that hand reading and all those other skills aren't needed. They get developed over time. But trying to make them the main parts of our game when we know that this isn't how we go about "solving" poker just seems like a suboptimal way of going about poker.

[Pelion]

GTO means we are attempting to finds ways to play almost perfectly. Poker isn't solved so obviously we don't have GTO but by attempting to learn it and seeing how we create really solid almost nash strategies (of which that donkr article I've linked to a few times does @sevenduece) we come across many ways of which don't work that may seem like they work. So we end up coming up with loads of really tight lines, knowing how people might try to exploit us whilst taking these lines and as we've seen why they don't work we have our adjustments already to exploit them, because we know how and why our opponents lines don't work.

When we are looking for all of these ways though our aim isn't to try and play GTO 100% of the time, in reality we'd be doing something wrong to be sat at a table where this would even be remotely needed.

I'm also not saying that hand reading and all those other skills aren't needed. They get developed over time. But trying to make them the main parts of our game when we know that this isn't how we go about "solving" poker just seems like a suboptimal way of going about poker.

And now you're saying almost the exact same as my first post in this thread

[seven-deuce]

GTO means we are attempting to finds ways to play almost perfectly. Poker isn't solved so obviously we don't have GTO but by attempting to learn it and seeing how we create really solid almost nash strategies (of which that donkr article I've linked to a few times does @sevenduece) we come across many ways of which don't work that may seem like they work. So we end up coming up with loads of really tight lines, knowing how people might try to exploit us whilst taking these lines and as we've seen why they don't work we have our adjustments already to exploit them, because we know how and why our opponents lines don't work.

When we are looking for all of these ways though our aim isn't to try and play GTO 100% of the time, in reality we'd be doing something wrong to be sat at a table where this would even be remotely needed.

I'm also not saying that hand reading and all those other skills aren't needed. They get developed over time. But trying to make them the main parts of our game when we know that this isn't how we go about "solving" poker just seems like a suboptimal way of going about poker.

I didn't see a link ITT. Post the link, I'm interested in reading it.

[Pelion]

just google "donkr" and "3bet".

theyre pretty famous articles by now.

Also some good postflop ones in there.

[Savy]

I think the issue is that you can't tell a new player to learn poker by pointing them at the most advanced topics in the game. That would be like telling someone to start learning physics and handing them a graduate-level quantum theory book. You're setting them up for failure.

Kind of, and I have said that I don't think it's the first thing you should learn. I just think I'm advocating learning it before most people in this thread are. But I'd say it's more like handing someone a Graduate level book on QM when they are fully capable of doing all the maths involved. As given your level of maths is ok non of the work that I've seen done is mind blowing or anything.

@72 http://en.donkr.com/articles/page/2 should be able to find them all here.

[jackvance]

This thread is pure comedy.

[NightGizmo]

I started reading the 3bet-part1 article on donkr (http://en.donkr.com/Articles/optimal...x---part-1-329) and immediately found this:

It's important to realize that a game theory optimal strategy doesn't try to maximize +EV against a random opponent. It's trying to maximize EV against an opponent who is also playing perfectly. Sometimes, this means the best result for both players is to break even. A game theory optimal strategy is first and foremost a defensive strategy, designed not to lose. However, an optimal strategy will win against players who are using non-optimal strategies. But If we see an opponent making big mistakes, we will win more by switching to an exploitative strategy, designed to exploit this opponent's specific leaks maximally.

[Savy]

I'm clearly very bad at wording things because I swear I've said that a fucking million times ITT already.

[NightGizmo]

Then I don't get what you're arguing for/against. If a player can't even manage to exploit the player pool at 5NL enough to win, how does learning/playing GTO help him more than learning the basics?

[Micro2Macro]

it will enhance your hand reading ability and allow you to see spots to exploit someone and precisely how to do it

studying optimal play wont make you a worse poker player lol

[BorisTheSpider]

To add my first entirely non-glib contribution to this thread, what Savy is saying does somewhat tie in with something I've been thinking about recently, which is that I don't just want to spend my time improving how well I exploit fish (although that is important for profitability, building a BR and moving up) but I also want to put more effort into improving how I play against "competent" (for my stakes) regs, since that is what will most quickly improve my overall play and allow me to hack it at higher limits as I move up.

[griffey24]

A hand from today.

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BTN: $26.26 (105 bb)
SB: $12.10 (48.4 bb)
Hero (BB): $58.18 (232.7 bb)
UTG: $19.06 (76.2 bb)
MP: $40.35 (161.4 bb)
CO: $71.04 (284.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 5 K
UTG calls $0.25, 4 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.60) 2 A 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.50, UTG calls $0.50

Turn: ($1.60) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.75, Hero calls $0.75

River: ($3.10) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $17.50, UTG calls $17.50

Results: $38.10 pot ($1.71 rake)
Final Board: 2 A 6 7 8
Hero showed 5 K and won $36.39 ($17.39 net)
UTG mucked 2 A and lost (-$19 net)

I don't have a bluffing range here either.

The best way to analyze this hand is not to biased by the result.

Look at his entire preflop range that will call the flop and then look at the portion of that range that will bet the turn when you check. Probably some combination of 6x, FDs, two pairs/sets (that don't raise the flop - which realistically should discount some), strong Ax and a turned A7 and some air.

Now of that total range, what portion will call the river. I'd estimate two pairs/sets/flushes.

So that represents a certain % of his turn betting range. So X% of the time when he has the two pairs/sets/flushes you will win the $17.50 and (1-X)% of the time you will win 0%.

Now do the same thing for like a $2.5 bet and see what proportion of his turn betting range calls?

Even though it worked here I really don't like this hand and I think the fact it worked is just going to act as a catalyst to do it more in the future. I also don't like the turn c/c especially, and then the river overbet shove makes me sad haha.

[griffey24]

Are you saying that if you joined a game of rock paper scissors and noticed that everyone picked scissors every time, you wouldn't figure out you should start off playing rock until Nash solved it for you?

I think he's just saying:

If you learn GTO then you know what optimal is.
If you know what optimal is you can recognize other players playing optimally and other players playing sub-optimally.
If you know how a player is playing sub-optimally (how they are deviating from optimal) then you know how you can exploit this players tendencies by also deviating your play from optimal.

[Savy]

ding ding ding we have a winner.

[Pelion]

I think he's just saying:

If you learn GTO then you know what optimal is.
If you know what optimal is you can recognize other players playing optimally and other players playing sub-optimally.
If you know how a player is playing sub-optimally (how they are deviating from optimal) then you know how you can exploit this players tendencies by also deviating your play from optimal.

Yeah, I think a lot of people said that on the first page, myself included. But lets not paralyse ourselves into not adjusting until we have 10k hands and a rock solid read. Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed like Savy was saying we should be wary of adjusting early as we can lose a lot if we adjust wrong. There are plenty of spots you can make a +EV adjustment based on a small number of hands or even a population read. As an example, I will tag a player as loose passive if I see them open limp a single hand pre. I will then treat them as a loose passive until given reason to think otherwise. I don't see any reason why adjusting early and being wrong some % of the time should be a terrible thing (unless you are making hugely over the top adjustments).

I think most of us are saying largely the same thing, but my take on it would be

1) Adjust early and adjust often
2) Don't use GTO as an excuse to stop paying attention to villains tendencies.

[Savy]

Yeah, I think a lot of people said that on the first page, myself included. But lets not paralyse ourselves into not adjusting until we have 10k hands and a rock solid read. Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed like Savy was saying we should be wary of adjusting early as we can lose a lot if we adjust wrong. There are plenty of spots you can make a +EV adjustment based on a small number of hands or even a population read. As an example, I will tag a player as loose passive if I see them open limp a single hand pre. I will then treat them as a loose passive until given reason to think otherwise. I don't see any reason why adjusting early and being wrong some % of the time should be a terrible thing (unless you are making hugely over the top adjustments).

The example you give is actually a really obvious case of over adjusting based on really weak reads, I suppose this depends on what you are doing to adjust to this but it's more than likely too much. And when we are wrong we are -EV this should also be quite clear.

[Carroters]

Treating someone as a fish because they limp and then isoing them/c betting pretty wide vs them IP is a bread and butter way of printing a lot of money over a big sample. Treating them as an unknown and playing GTO vs them is a really good way to fail to make all this money.

[BorisTheSpider]

Treating someone as a fish because they limp and then isoing them/c betting pretty wide vs them IP is a bread and butter way of printing a lot of money over a big sample. Treating them as an unknown and playing GTO vs them is a really good way to fail to make all this money.

Balla. It's not even slightly an over adjustment at the micros. The number of times someone open limps and is not a fish can be counted on the fingers of one foot.

[BorisTheSpider]

Even though it worked here I really don't like this hand and I think the fact it worked is just going to act as a catalyst to do it more in the future. I also don't like the turn c/c especially, and then the river overbet shove makes me sad haha.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely really will do the analysis you suggested next time I'm at my PC, but I was also being only semi-serious in posting it, I think it illustrates a point though - even if my read was wrong 6 times out of 7 it would still break even with a $2.50 bet. Sometimes an outrageous adjustment can be golden, I would never try it readless, and I've probably only done something this outrageous once every 10,000 hands or something like that.

[Micro2Macro]

u guys r completely missing the point

no shit you play a 30/5 differently than some reg

[Savy]

Treating someone as a fish because they limp and then isoing them/c betting pretty wide vs them IP is a bread and butter way of printing a lot of money over a big sample. Treating them as an unknown and playing GTO vs them is a really good way to fail to make all this money.

Well done mate, that's clearly exactly what my post said. In the future I'll make sure I find and replace all "don't over adjust" with "DO NOT ADJUST AT ALL" as they're clearly synonymous.

The whole idea that you have that we always need to make massive adjustments to get the most EV out of people is exactly is what will stop you getting the most EV out of people.

[Micro2Macro]

the best part about this thread is its had me glued to the computer all day, and the computer is where poker is played

[Carroters]

Well done mate, that's clearly exactly what my post said. In the future I'll make sure I find and replace all "don't over adjust" with "DO NOT ADJUST AT ALL" as they're clearly synonymous.

The whole idea that you have that we always need to make massive adjustments to get the most EV out of people is exactly is what will stop you getting the most EV out of people.

lol pot-kettle. If I've exaggerated your view it's not been intentional, it's just genuinely the way your post sounded. Seems like the majority of people haven't misconstrued or exaggerated my original post in the above way so I'm happy with that I guess.

[Savy]

lol pot-kettle. If I've exaggerated your view it's not been intentional, it's just genuinely the way your post sounded. Seems like the majority of people haven't misconstrued or exaggerated my original post in the above way so I'm happy with that I guess.

It isn't pot kettle at all, you really don't seem to understand this. Also it's pathetic that your view point is that because I said something which disagrees with your post, which I genuinely think is wrong, you think it's a good thing that you misunderstood me. Sounds like you need to grow up, we should be capable of having debates about things without turning to throwing petty insults around.

The idea behind my posts is to discuss what the thread is about, it isn't let's try and be a dick to Carroters so stop taking the stuff I say as if it's a personal attack.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Sounds like you need to grow up, we should be capable of having debates about things without turning to throwing petty insults around.

[Savy]

I'll just have to assume I did this loads in my previous posts. I'm pretty sure I didn't but if I did I apologise. Also note being blunt isn't being insulting, nor is disagreeing with someone and saying they are wrong, so I'm not sorry about any of that.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Am I the only one who sees the irony in saying this:

Sounds like you need to grow up

and this:

we should be capable of having debates about things without turning to throwing petty insults around.

in the same sentence?

[NightGizmo]

ImSavy is doing an expert job of trolling this thread.

[rpm]

i think he just doesn't realise how he comes across. pretty sure he's shooting straight in this one

[Pelion]

The example you give is actually a really obvious case of over adjusting based on really weak reads, I suppose this depends on what you are doing to adjust to this but it's more than likely too much. And when we are wrong we are -EV this should also be quite clear.

I think this point is our main disagreement - and I think if you actually tried to make these kinds of adjustments for a week and kept a record of the times you were right/wrong and the value you won/lost because of it, you would see that it is absolutely the right thing to do pretty quickly. This isn't close.


I think you have the perception that when you are usually right and sometimes wrong, that is suddenly a ---EV adjustment when actually it is probably more like a ranking of:

Always adjust correctly = +++EV
Usually adjust correctly, and sometimes incorrectly = ++EV
Don't adjust = +EV


Edited to labour the point:

when we are wrong we are -EV this should also be quite clear.

Poker is all about playing the percentages. Why should adjusting be any different? If being right is +10EVees, and being wrong is -10EVees, and we will be right 80% of the time and wrong 20% of the time by adjusting, then refusing to adjust is a clear mistake.

Your next argument will either be that we are wrong more than 50% of the time, or that we lose far more when we are wrong than we win when we are right. I disagree with both.

[Savy]

The fact is though you disagree when in reality you have no idea. Making tiny mistakes in terms of adjustments can lead to playing really badly. I'm not saying always but in a lot of spots it does so just keep being being ignorant to it rather than trying to understand it.

It's getting boring now repeating the same point if you don't understand it I quite honestly don't care .

[Pelion]

The fact is though you disagree when in reality you have no idea. Making tiny mistakes in terms of adjustments can lead to playing really badly. I'm not saying always but in a lot of spots it does so just keep being being ignorant to it rather than trying to understand it.

It's getting boring now repeating the same point if you don't understand it I quite honestly don't care .

You keep repeating the idea that you are the only person here smart enough to understand simple concepts while randomly saying we have no idea whether these adjustments work. You have been playing these stakes for almost a year now. If you still have no idea whether these adjustments work on a regular basis then frankly you are not paying nearly enough attention. I'm assuming you have some kind of tracking software? Maybe review some hands from time to time.

edit: Let's also go back to this quote:

Sounds like you need to grow up, we should be capable of having debates about things without turning to throwing petty insults around.

Your entire method of debating is to take the position of "if you disagree with me it must be because you aren't smart enough to understand my towering intellect". I really think you would learn faster if you didn't automatically start with the assumption that you are the smartest person in the room.

[Savy]

Wow you really aren't getting this.

There are spots where value betting a little too wide is still going to be more +EV than whatever GTO is even though we may be over adjusting and not maximising our EV.

There are also spots where value betting a little too wide can be fucking horrible and massively -EV.

You (and I and everyone) don't know exactly where all these points are or what frequency they occur. However when we study a GTO approach we start to find these points and understand them and therefore we know how to adjust correctly, the problems of over adjusting and all these points we can apply to exploit our opponent when they aren't playing optimally (read optimally as GTO not most +EV).

Then if we factor in the fact that our reads are never 100% right we begin to realise how horrible the mistakes we can be making are.

I also don't think I'm the only one smart enough to understand it at all. I think there is confusion in some of the terminology and people not necessarily understanding the concepts that I'm talking about. If you go research it yourself I'm sure you'll find lots of people more knowledgeable that myself explaining it in much better ways.

That's the last thing I'm posting about this specific subject now.

[seven-deuce]

I have changed my opinion on this debate, Savy is correct. It's better to play optimally or as close to it vs unknowns and then deviate from optimal in order to exploit a leak. Knowing what optimal play is in a certain spot makes it easier to spot your opponent's sub-optimal play.

[Pelion]

Wow you really aren't getting this.

No, I really am, and I still disagree.

There are spots where value betting a little too wide is still going to be more +EV than whatever GTO is even though we may be over adjusting and not maximising our EV.

Yes, and these are very common at microstakes, except that you probably want to be value betting a LOT too wide as a default in certain spots at microstakes. e.g. TPGK with KQ for 3 streets vs an unknown limper who calls down.

There are also spots where value betting a little too wide can be fucking horrible and massively -EV.

I don't agree with this and would be interested in a spot you think qualifies. If we are only value betting a little too wide, then we can only be making a little mistake. We would have to be value betting a lot too wide to be making a big mistake and we would have to be value betting a fucking horrible massive amount too wide for it to be fucking horrible and massively -EV. Regardless, if we are making the correct adjustments then this will happen a lot less often than us gaining EV and we will profit overall.

You (and I and everyone) don't know exactly where all these points are or what frequency they occur. However when we study a GTO approach we start to find these points and understand them and therefore we know how to adjust correctly, the problems of over adjusting and all these points we can apply to exploit our opponent when they aren't playing optimally (read optimally as GTO not most +EV).

Yes, GTO is useful to study so you can easily spot mistakes and see how to adjust (again.....) but is horribly fucking massively below optimal EV in a microstakes game (again....).

Then if we factor in the fact that our reads are never 100% right we begin to realise how horrible the mistakes we can be making are.

Our read can also be wrong as an underestimate. If we think villain calls too much we will value bet more and bluff less. If he actually never folds then our adjustment is better than GTO by even more than we thought. Uncertainty is not a good reason to play like a robot in a game where we can only ever play probabilities. If we are usually right then we make more than we lose. If we are playing microstakes fish then we should be good enough to usually be right.


I want to set you a challenge. Play 50k hands of 2NL zoom playing as GTO as you can vs everyone. Raise your gutshots and your 3straight+3flushes vs unknowns and barrel your turn draws. Call down your middle pairs on dry flops. 3bet your suited crap preflop vs CO raisers. Then post your winrate. Will you win? Probably. Will you make the 20+bb/100 you can make by just valuebetting the shit out of top pair? I doubt it.

After that, play 50k hands where you treat everyone who open limps pre as a passive fish until proven otherwise, and anyone who min3bets as a spazzy fish until proven otherwise. Compare winrates. I'd be willing to bet that your second set would go better than your first.

[griffey24]

This thread is quite tilting for me. Honestly I don't even care who's right or wrong in this thread.

But what I DO care about is one thing: One of the main things that separates this forum from other poker forums, and that has separated it for as long as I've been posting here, is that we have less trolls. Less people being douches in threads, and responding condescendingly to people that may or may not know better than them. There's honestly been too much of it in this thread and other threads as well.

This is the beginner's forum. People are here to learn. People WILL be wrong. People WILL know less than you at times. People WILL have trouble understanding some concepts. Be patient, or if you're getting tilted from some posts then don't post a response in that 10 minute window. Let's keep FTR the way it's been known to be, and not turn it into the other douche-infested forums.

/rant

[seven-deuce]

This thread is quite tilting for me. Honestly I don't even care who's right or wrong in this thread.

But what I DO care about is one thing: One of the main things that separates this forum from other poker forums, and that has separated it for as long as I've been posting here, is that we have less trolls. Less people being douches in threads, and responding condescendingly to people that may or may not know better than them. There's honestly been too much of it in this thread and other threads as well.

This is the beginner's forum. People are here to learn. People WILL be wrong. People WILL know less than you at times. People WILL have trouble understanding some concepts. Be patient, or if you're getting tilted from some posts then don't post a response in that 10 minute window. Let's keep FTR the way it's been known to be, and not turn it into the other douche-infested forums.

/rant

I agree.

[WeldPhaser]

This thread is quite tilting for me. Honestly I don't even care who's right or wrong in this thread.

But what I DO care about is one thing: One of the main things that separates this forum from other poker forums, and that has separated it for as long as I've been posting here, is that we have less trolls. Less people being douches in threads, and responding condescendingly to people that may or may not know better than them. There's honestly been too much of it in this thread and other threads as well.

This is the beginner's forum. People are here to learn. People WILL be wrong. People WILL know less than you at times. People WILL have trouble understanding some concepts. Be patient, or if you're getting tilted from some posts then don't post a response in that 10 minute window. Let's keep FTR the way it's been known to be, and not turn it into the other douche-infested forums.

/rant

Absolutely this. In 2009 I had joined a mega-immature forum where most of the members would rather bully the newbs. It's an awful thing when your trying to learn something.

On this topic I'm going to simply say this: Over the past 9 months I have beat 5nl & 10nl on lock, and I can honestly say at the tables I'd be way out leveling thinking about balancing for the most part. Away from the table I would do in-depth range analysis on hands in my DB, and hands in the BC, but at the tables I would just use my notes, the notes poker tracker4 took for me. I would determine how POS aware villains were. use that to think about how board intersects with them, and go from there. Even villains with reg-ish stats have super leaks post flop to exploit. the few that are actually decent. Well, that's not where your building your bankroll from.

I guarantee Savy is incapable of admitting when he's wrong

[Savy]

I guarantee Savy is incapable of admitting when he's wrong

What you want to do is actually read up on stuff before coming to an opinion, at no point do I think you should take anything I or others say as gospel when it comes to poker because the vast majority of the time it isn't. But when you get through some misconceptions that people seem to have had with the stuff that I've said a lot of it is very solid.

For the record though I actually had a chat with Carroters last night and we basically came to an agreement about most of the stuff in this thread.

And I'm sure I admit I'm wrong about stuff when I am wrong. In fact if you do some digging through my posts I'm sure you'll find examples of this instead of over adjusting due to poor reads :P

[daven]

I have changed my opinion on this debate, Savy is correct. It's better to play optimally or as close to it vs unknowns and then deviate from optimal in order to exploit a leak. Knowing what optimal play is in a certain spot makes it easier to spot your opponent's sub-optimal play.

genuine question re the above. Savvy, you are probably best placed to answer this well.

is it not better to deviate from optimal (i'm assuming you mean GTO in this context) in the way that you know is most likely to exploit population norms when you're up against an unknown? unless you think that unknowns are likely to be very, very good?

[daven]

For the record though I actually had a chat with Carroters last night and we basically came to an agreement about most of the stuff in this thread.

^ this doesn't surprise me, my guess is that there have been a couple of misunderstandings based on when it is best to apply an optimal strategy and when it is best to deviate from it. That basically seems the guts of most posts, with another set of posts suggesting that knowing the optimal strategy with your range in a specific spot being unnecessary to beat micros and from that arguing that this knowledge is of less value than others contend.

[Savy]

genuine question re the above. Savvy, you are probably best placed to answer this well.

is it not better to deviate from optimal (i'm assuming you mean GTO in this context) in the way that you know is most likely to exploit population norms when you're up against an unknown? unless you think that unknowns are likely to be very, very good?

When I say optimal I do mean GTO ye, it's shitty language but everyone I've seen speak about this before uses it so it's just trying to be consistent and if you don't get it a bit of logic should be able to deduce what I mean like you have done.

As for population reads it's a bit awkward. As yeah it's probably fine when the population read is everyone is really bad and we don't go overboard with the adjustments but it really helps to understand the spots where doing this is dangerous and the spots where doing this isn't ever going to be horrendous. It also becomes much more vulnerable as soon as we start playing people who begin to be competent at exploiting us.

I suppose all these questions become much easier to answer when we actually have solid population reads, but the stuff that gets banded about like people call too wide, value bet more and bluff less isn't really what I'd class as a solid population read in the sense that it doesn't really give us any specifics about how we should adjust or factor in the variation in the population which is what's important.

So it all boils down to the fact that GTO against an unknown is never bad. It may not be the most profitable strategy but it is a profitable strategy. The other side to it is that the worse the player the quicker we get reads and the quicker we can exploit them in the first place so it's not really like we're missing out on that much value anyway.

At what point all these factors tip favouring whatever approach as a starting point against an unknown I really couldn't give you a definite answer on though. I just think it tends to be best to air on the side of caution and the worse a player the quicker and the more confident we can be about adjusting.

[seven-deuce]

genuine question re the above. Savvy, you are probably best placed to answer this well.

is it not better to deviate from optimal (i'm assuming you mean GTO in this context) in the way that you know is most likely to exploit population norms when you're up against an unknown? unless you think that unknowns are likely to be very, very good?

I'm no expert I only read one of the donkr articles 3/4/5 betting part 1. All the underlying concepts that are presented are all sound in my view. From my basic understanding of it, if you take any poker scenario there is going to be an optimal strategy for hero and villain. Finding out what this is or as close to it as you can get is invaluable information, since if you know villain should do 'x' in a certain situation but he does 'y' then you know he is playing sub-optimally or in other words, is exploitable.

E.g Villain opens, you 3bet, villain calls. Villain flips up QQ at showdown, you know that QQ should be in villains 4bet range if he were playing optimally. Therefore you can deduce that villain isn't 4betting enough and is calling too many 3bets OOP and you can exploit him by narrowing your 5bet shove range, and 3bet more IP.

I think if you are facing an unknown you should apply standard ranges for them for example. If you have 0 hands on a guy and he opens utg you should assign a standard utg range for that stake for a reg like 10% 12% or w/e it happens to be. Then if you know vs that range and standard bet sizes, the optimal 3betting strategy you should employ it until you see him playing sub-optimally and adjust from there.

I only just read it and haven't studied it in any depth at all. So this could be wrong.

[kickass]

Bout bloody time

[WeldPhaser]

Savy . I didn't say you were wrong in this instance. I just said due to how this post reads out you don't like to admit when your wrong is all. I did read the whole post. I made me tired and aggravated.

[Pascal]

Lots of good posts in this thread, one of the few long threads I've bothered to read on any forum ever. Some great stuff, some slightly worse stuff, but plenty which make me think.

Sounds like you need to grow up, we should be capable of having debates about things without turning to throwing petty insults around.

The only person to insult anyone was you, and you did it on multiple occasions. I think you need to go back through this thread and read your posts again Savy and it should stand out to you pretty clearly. Aside from that looked like a solid debate to me and I took plenty out of it.

[Carroters]

This thread is quite tilting for me. Honestly I don't even care who's right or wrong in this thread.

But what I DO care about is one thing: One of the main things that separates this forum from other poker forums, and that has separated it for as long as I've been posting here, is that we have less trolls. Less people being douches in threads, and responding condescendingly to people that may or may not know better than them. There's honestly been too much of it in this thread and other threads as well.

This is the beginner's forum. People are here to learn. People WILL be wrong. People WILL know less than you at times. People WILL have trouble understanding some concepts. Be patient, or if you're getting tilted from some posts then don't post a response in that 10 minute window. Let's keep FTR the way it's been known to be, and not turn it into the other douche-infested forums.

/rant

Yeah this is pretty much the same for me. Reason I stick about this forum and post here before anywhere else is that it's by far the most friendly and for the most part respectful public place in the online poker world.

I've never bought the whole nonsense about "he's allowed to insult you he plays 600NL, just take it on the chin and be stronger for it" Don't see why the ego rep wars that go on at 2+2 are necessary. Here the majority of people don't abuse newer or less successful players. Long may it continue.

As for this thread yeah I think it's been mostly interesting though at times titling.

[seven-deuce]

I have been doing a lot of reading up on GTO and balancing since I read this thread, I just came across an article that expresses the same idea Carroters was making: http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...our-poker-game

The part in particular talking about playing bottom set on a dry flop: Who cares? Just because you can’t balance a play doesn’t mean that you can’t make it. Is there more value in playing this hand in an optimal fashion, or is there more value in playing your entire range in a particular way? This is an infrequent situation, and the hand will infrequently go to showdown. That means it will take a long time for your opponent to know that you’re not balanced. Remember – your opponent will never know that you can never do something. Just because they see you take this line twice with a set doesn’t mean they know you can never have air here.
In these spots that come up infrequently, look for ways to capture immediate value. If it’s there, grab it. If it’s not, then worry about balance.

So it's only important to be balanced in spots that come up frequently and that go to showdown often? Since villain will be seeing our cards more often and can adjust, if he feels he can exploit us either by folding to a certain line that he thinks we're never bluffing with or calling more when we take a line that he thinks we are bluffing a lot. It makes more sense to be balanced in a cases like that which come up frequently.

[BorisTheSpider]

Good post 72, that's made concrete for me something I had a "feel" for, by hadn't really been able to state:

Playing in a less exploitative and unbalanced way is useful when:

1. Something happens a lot (so that even modestly observant opponents might notice and adjust)
2. A hand goes to showdown (especially when what we have might provoke someone to make a note)